They'll steamroll right over them, and no lawyer will be able to help the poor devs. Like the KGB fellows used to say, "for every man, for every deed, there is a paragraph. And if there is none, then a new one shall be written".Hooray for big corporations.

Apple doesn't need a patent here. They hold the keys to the device. Unless they feel like blessing your hardware or software, your market is limited to jailbroken devices only(and the 100 or whatever individually authorized test devices, for what good it will do you).

That is the real danger of going up against Apple. They control the sole distribution channel, as well as developing the APIs for the device, and can authorize and deauthorize at

Being a big corp means they can find some tangentially related idea within the bowels of the Cupertino campus and call that prior art.

Prior art is implementations that have been used in the public sphere, not secrets you created in a lab and never showed anyone. And being a big corp doesn't mean Apple will win a patent case. Big guys get gunned down in patent litigation by little guys all the time. That's part of the reason so many big corporations feel we should move to a first to file system.

They used to pull this shit back in the 90s when I used them too. Back when System 7 was out, there were tons of freely available system extensions and control panels on the web, and small applications that added desktop gadgets and whatnot. Well, both System 7.5 and System 8 were nothing but Apple ripoffs of extensions and control panels stolen from the community and packaged into overpriced OS upgrades. Systems 7 and 7.5 even had compatible Finders (shells), there was practically nothing different about the OSs aside from the stolen extensions.
I put up with that behavior then since at the time Apple was years ahead of the rest of the personal computer market, but I jumped ship as soon as I could get a good alternative.

Yeah I remember that. Apple was definitely borrowing some ideas. Some ideas, also, it purchased -- such as WindowShade, which was a third-party Control Panel which Apple straight-up bought and dropped wholesale into the OS.

However, when any OS, any piece of software, gets upgraded, the upgrades typically address the weakest parts. That means there is a natural overlap with the third-party add-ons, which also naturally address the weakest parts. Some of the implementations of these fixes are straightforward and obvious.

For example, consider AdBlock Plus. If Firefox were to implement a built-in content filter, the result might resemble AdBlock (or it might not). Would that mean Firefox ripped off AdBlock? Yeah, maybe, nor maybe not so much.

Can't speak for MacOS 8 as I left the Mac at 7.5.3, to return with a 12" Powerbook when OS X 10.2 Jaguar came out. Even at the time though, a few of us in the mixed Mac/PC shop I worked at called System 7.5 'the shareware edition', because it really did just seem like what we'd already sorted our System 7 installs to be. Wikipedia seems to confirm this too: look at the System 7.5 section here [wikipedia.org] (search on 'Capone') and see the number of features which originated in shareware. 7.5 was a paid upgrade.

Can't speak for 8 and 9, but 7.5 was definitely shareware...err...'inspired'.

There's really nothing wrong with copying ideas, and furthermore ideas can't be copyrighted. (And don't tell me that you're in favor of patenting this kind of stuff.) Otherwise, we wouldn't have the computer industry or really any other industry.

I do think credit should be given where credit is due, though.

Great: We know you love Product X so much, so we hired the developer / bought the company and we're including it in our OS.

Good: We saw this awesome feature by Developer X, and now we're incorporating into our OS.

OK: We're introducing this great feature as a core feature of our OS.

Bad: We just invented this totally radical new feature. See what happens when innovative minds get to innovating new innovations.

How on earth does a company like Apple seem to think they can steal someone’s idea and get away with it? If this isn’t just an oops of epic proportions, the arrogance it indicates is simply shocking. I predict that they won’t back down until they are forced to and when it is much, much too late for them to avoid losing face.

If you're not going to bother applying for a patent, you forfeit your right to decide who can and cannot implement your idea.

They probably thought it was pretty obvious and thus not patentable. In any event, they have no basis to complain that Apple is producing a competing product, since they obviously did not file a patent of their own. However they have every right to be outraged that Apple filed for a patent, which would keep them from producing a product that they conceived of first.

So your reason for rooting for the big corporation to stomp on the little guy is that the little guy failed to used the badly broken patent system to protect their idea from the corporate behemoth? When said behemoth has a full time staff of patent attorneys, and the little guy is probably just some start up with engineers that foolishly thought they could just make cool stuff and sell it without having a patent attorney on staff?

After reading all TFAs, I found the relevant detail: According to the iControlPad guys, their idea predated the filing date on the patent (which was late 2008) by 6 months.

If this is well documented, it should be an open-and-shut case. Apple’s patent is invalid due to prior art. Since apparently iControlPad’s makers didn’t already patent it, Apple would be free to make a competing product, but they can’t patent it.

How on earth does a company like Apple seem to think they can steal someone's idea and get away with it?

How do you know they stole the idea? Independent invention is possible. If the iControlPad creators had filed for a U.S. patent, there is a good chance that they would be engaged in interference proceedings [wikipedia.org] to determine who has the right to the patent.

In the United States, an inventor has twelve months after an invention becomes known to file for a patent. The fact that Apple filed for the patent after

True enough... but it also throws the non-obviousness of the patent into question. If multiple people came up with the idea simultaneously it might have been obvious, and if so it shouldn’t be a patentable idea.

Yeah, that’s accurate. It would, though, at least prevent Apple from suing these guys for infringing the patent (well, it should). Apple would still probably drown them with its huge name recognition...

You can't patent an idea, you can only patent an implementation of an idea.

That is the rhetoric, but in actual practice the raison d'etre of patent attorneys is to make the patents they write so broad that they encompass entire classifications of inventions. A land grab, more or less.

If an "implementation" were all that was at issue, in the field of software copyright would be more than adequate. Instead we get patents granted for the entire field of social networking implemented using the industry standard technology that has been around for decades. Or purchasing things on a web browser with one click. Or any conceivable copy on write filesystem, etc.

If an "implementation" were all that was at issue, in the field of software copyright would be more than adequate.

No, copyright covers an instance of an implementation of an idea. Patents can cover a virtual mechanism regardless of exact syntax and choice of object breakdown. And in this day and age it's pretty obvious to me that if you allow patents for any physical invention it would be silly not to also offer patents on virtual inventions.

some other entity may independently re-invet your "secret", and if the other entity patents it, you are screwed

You can’t patent somebody else’s trade secret. They developed it first, which means they had the rights to patent, and if they didn’t patent then you’re free to copy it... but you still can’t patent it yourself.

But even so, you can’t call something a “trade secret” when it was “docking a device into a frame containing rumble packs, direction keypads, etc. to make it easier to play games”. As soon as you produce one, it isn’t a secret.

It is precisely this attitude that allows injustice to prevail in the world. Congratulations, you've just enabled evil.

No, its the people who, ignorantly, believe that democracy will fix this problem due to some "will of the people", that are enabling evil. Capitalism and democracy created this problem and enable the behavior. Just like all other forms of government, the problem is that government does a poor job of controlling and channeling greed into productive ends.

You shouldn't **have** to file for a patent just to make something. Patents are only for keeping other people from making something. If 20 companies want to make versions of the iControlPad that's fine, but apparently Apple feels the need to keep anyone but themselves from making a device like that (including the original inventor). Hope you enjoy your over-priced proprietary version (with trendy styling) of a product that could have cost a frack of a lot less if anyone but Apple were making it.

Even if the patent is invalidated the iControlPad guys are out in the cold, because Apple will drown them under a flood of lawyers.

Also, the summary mentions that the controller is in production. Was the design released with the controller? The patent doesn't go to the first person to think of something, or even make and sell it; it goes to the first person who is willing to tell the world about it in a patent application.

The US is the only country in the world that has a first-to-invent system. Resolution of this (when two applicants each believe they separately invented the same invention) is called an "interference" between the two conflicting parties, in which each inventor attempts to prove that they were the true first inventor of the claimed invention.

For publications, the one year "grace period" is only guaranteed for one's own publications of an invention. If you publish an invention on 1 September 2007, you have one year, until the first business day on or after 1 September 2008, to file your application for that invention. But if the prior art is a publication authored by someone else, the grace period does not apply unless you can prove either (a) reduction to practice of the invention before the prior art date, or (b) complete conception of the invention before the prior art date coupled with due diligence until reduction to practice or the filing date.

Any publication more than one year before the filing date always counts as prior art, even if you can prove you had reduced your invention to practice before that publication - and even if the publication was your own work. Public use or sale in the US more than a year before the filing date also counts for this.

Also, not being an expert either maybe someone here can explain, does the product have to actually be shipping for it to be prior art? If not, then wouldn't all basic mp3 player patents be void since the idea itself has been around for decades?

The invention must have been _published_ to count as "prior art". And a year or two ago the rules in the USA have changed that adding two and two together also counts as prior art: If invention A does X, and invention B does Y, then this counts as "prior art" for putting A and B together and getting X and Y.

There will be discussions how widely available a publication has to be to count as "published".

See figure 5 [patentlyapple.com] of the patent application. Not sure what this means for the whole thing. Did someone at Apple just throw together a few ideas, and patent them all? The language and the "art" seems vague enough for it. Unfortunately, I'm not a lawyer, so I have no clue whether something like this means that the entire patent application can be tossed out, or whether vague language means it can't be enforced.

Either which way, this is about as lame as patent applications come. It really sounds like someone looked around at existing platforms and said "let's patent them all."

The figure you linked is of a hardware device (ipod touch/iphone) inside a dock that has an auxiliary screen. The nintendo DS is a single device with 2 screens. They are very different. Tho, the figure does look like a nintendo DS a lot.

What I find interesting is what one of the websites linked by the twitter account said about filing date:"The Apple patent was originally filed in Q3 2008, while the iControlPad first got covered by Pocket Gamer in May 2008."

It would be interesting to know if apple has anything that would demonstrate they had been working on this patent before may 2008, or even before the icontrolpad group thought about it. Wouldn't that demonstrate prior art?

They're both agglomerations of older tech, surrounded in plastic, with identical functionality. One of them is very different because it comes in two parts?

Well, I wasn't passing judgement on the patent or the patent system. But now that you ask for my input; I think that the whole patent system including hardware (which we are talking about right now) is in pretty bad shape. Said that, as it stands, it's very possible they are different because the apple patent will be about an accessory to a system with

Things like the Beatles owning the rights to the "Apple" brand and allowing them to use it so long as they stay out of the music business, and then doing the iTunes music store was bad enough... then challenging Apple Records over their name which predate's Apple Computer's? Putting a rightful competitor (Franklin) out of business when they improved on the Apple 2 computer they were allowed to create. There's probably a lot worse things that just aren't coming to mind at the moment and these multi-touch patent holders who were somehow unsuccessful in stopping Apple from selling their multi-touch devices and especially unsuccessful at preventing Apple from bringing new infringing devices to market.

Apple is a pretty evil company. I know... -1 troll, but new like this is bringing Apple closer to the level of Sony in my mind.

I mean if you assume IP is good, then Sony is great and Apple is evil...

But if you don't like IP? Apple is robin hood standing against the IP hoarders of the country.

At least that's what this sounds like. I'm sure on other fronts Apple is using their IP to put other poor slobs out of business, so this isn't any sweeping generality, just a comment on the previous post.

[News] like this is bringing Apple closer to the level of Sony in my mind.

It's nothing very new. For another story similar to the Apple Records story, ask google about Mark Newton and his newton.com domain, and what Apple did to him to get control of his domain name. (This can be easily tested with your browser; just type "newton.com" into the address bar, hit Return, and see where it takes you.) Apple was already using newton.apple.com, which you'd think would have been the reasonable domain name for on

That's not surprising. A former employer registered "next.com" named after his business. Apple stepped in and got it without a fight.

What I find suprprising (in a way) is that Apple fans can turn a blind eye to this type of behavior while worshipping everything Apple does. Interestingly enough, Apple users tend to think of themselves as good people... even "green" people quite often. Meanwhile, Apple's bullying and other horrible behaviors remain excluded from their "character."

Speaking with wisdom and reserve gets you +5 Insightful, not simple anti-Apple claptrap.

You are clearly new here.

Wisdom and reserve gets you +1 Troll.Stating cited facts gets you +1 flamebait or overratedHating on any company that is both successful financially and making changes (for better or good, but changes none the less) to the world is +5 Insightful.

And just to put this post back on topic, here is my opinion-based list of companies commonly hated on here:

Yeay: Google, wikileaks, Steve Jobs (but not Apple these days), the pirate bay, and the guy that made hamster dance.Nay: Microsoft, R

This is why people should think twice about making things for apple products. It is like operating in China, you can make a lot of money, but the big brother can pull the plug and smash you at any moment.

Not really. Jobs is a hoarder, sucking up every penny he can and not giving anything back. Not only did Gates create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but after he dies his own kids are going to end up with only a "small" trust fund and the rest of their fortune is going towards stamping out disease and illiteracy and bringing down birth rates.

It seems like Apple's patent lawyers are actively looking out for technology that has been invented/developed but hasn't been patented yet (and is at least somewhat related to their products); and filing patent applications for them. See "multi-touch."

The purpose is dual:

1. Prevent others from patenting the same thing;2. Use the patents to defend or preemptively attack competitors (see Nokia and HTC respectively).

This makes sense within the current patent system because if they don't do it, someone else mig

Apple hasn't received a patent on this yet. TFA refers to U.S. Patent Application Publication 2010/0081505, which was published Thursday and isn't a patent. It's just an application for a patent. In fact, the application hasn't been examined yet, as viewable in Public PAIR [uspto.gov].

I think Apple just wants to prevent iControlPad or some other company patenting the idea first, as it would leave Apple with a bag of hurt if they wanted to create their own device later. If there is to be a controller accessory for the iPhone/iPod, it should be (from a pragmatic point of view) developed in-house and standardized, as you don't want every game to require a different accessory or have to support a dozen controller profiles.

IMO, it would be bad for everyone if the iControlPad did catch on, as it's simply a poor controller: The "new design" more than doubles the width of the iPhone/iPod, you have to reposition your hands to touch the screen, and it doesn't seem to give your other eight fingers anything to do. Considering the problems they mentioned getting it to work with various versions of the iPhone and iPod, I'm also not convinced it will work with the next OS or hardware version. It's nice to see an attempt, especially from hobbyists, but I wouldn't want it to become the standard game controller for Apple handhelds.

Have you even read the patent? No way keyboards or gaming controls for phones are a prior art.

1. A hand-held game accessory to physically receive a portable electronic device to enhance the playing of games, the game accessory comprising:a recess to physically receive at least a substantial portion of the portable electronic device;a plurality of input controls that may be actuated by a user while playing a game;first circuitry to communicate with the portable electronic device, the communication relating to the actuation of a plurality of input controls; andsecond circuitry to retain information about a game after the portable electronic device is removed.

The thing retains information about the game, like a memory card or something.

4. The game accessory of claim 1 further comprising a connector insert for mating with a connector receptacle located on the portable media player to form a path for the communication, wherein the connector insert rotates to allow the game accessory to physically receive the portable electronic device.

So the connector has to rotate.
So to find a prior art, you have to find a controler with a rotating connector that has embedded memory to store score.
Here's the link to the patent [uspto.gov] if you care

I read that part about the "second circuitry to retain information about a game" too. I was wondering if that was thrown in there in order to make it sound like something non-obvious; but also still be able to go after "violators" even if they don't store the scores or player profile information because they would otherwise significantly infringe.

Besides, the examples they describe to support this "second circuitry" idea are pretty lame anyway. They say you could plug in your gaming shell to the portable sy

iControlPad didn't patent their device, they don't even have a device on the market, and they've been working on it for nearly 2 years now. They had a 6 month head start on Apple announcing *anything* and they didn't bother talking to an IP lawyer about filing a patent first? You've got to be kidding me.

Given that applying for a patent on something that you know someone else invented it blatant abuse of the patent system, I hope a lot of people learn something from this. Though I suspect not the same thing you're thinking of.

Apple is not a friend of FOSS, at best they are one step down from MS. Given the opportunity or threat they will sue Linux companies without hesitation. Their suit against HTC was a direct shot at Android and is a dozen of bogus software patents on stuff they didn't invent. People, please stop supporting Apple with your purchases if you value FOSS, you only justify their suits and threats.

that the product is not the only piece of IP being steamrollered? As late as Nov. 09, posts on http://icontrolpad.com/ [icontrolpad.com] have referred to the product under the shortened name 'iPad' (or Ipad, or ipad). Apple's iPad announcement probably put a formal stop to that (Jan 2010?)

that the product is not the only piece of IP being steamrollered? As late as Nov. 09, posts on http://icontrolpad.com/ [icontrolpad.com] have referred to the product under the shortened name 'iPad' (or Ipad, or ipad). Apple's iPad announcement probably put a formal stop to that (Jan 2010?)

For your rationale that they are suffering from 'hypocrisy' it'd help if you were talking about the sort of piracy where money is actually lost instead of using Jack Valenti's definition which states that copying a file means money disappears from their bank account.

And, if you're interested in really seeing if your comment holds any wayter, you should look up the difference between emulation and patent trolls.

How do I clearly not care about others' IP? By saying a hardware manufacturer isn't responsible for what an individual does with the hardware he bought from them? I was pointing out that by following that logic, Apple is responsible too because the emulator is running on their hardware. The controller itself isn't being used for piracy, and it obviously has another use besides with pirated roms, or Apple would have never ripped it off, would they have?

it's true the issue is to do with hardware, but note this: the iControlPad team [icontrolpad.com] are up in arms talking about 'their rights' and how they've been 'ripped off' and 'infringed' yet if you visit their site you will see they are more than happy to promote this - through screen-shots and videos - as method for running pirated games, such as Super Mario Kart and (what looks like) Mario Brothers DS. Could that be... 'hypocrisy'?

Maybe not hypocrisy since they aren't selling the methods of running those games and sometimes those games are more of a 'legal limbo' since if you own the games and the equipment you could format shift it. Their methods, while legally questionable, don't profit them with those games as I'm pretty sure it works above and beyond the few emulator styles they are using (not to mention I doubt they made that PSX emulator). With Apple trying to patent their design, they are most likely planning on selling the de

It seems like they are trying to patent a joypad with an ipod dock connector.

That seems like something that shouldn't be patentable.

There's no reason that bogus trivial patents can't apply to physical things too. Infact, if you watch enough educable you can see where companies go about patenting trivial stuff specifically to prevent their designs from being copied. Nothing particularly inventive is going on.

Since they are using jailbroken iPhones, it is quite possible that they are not paying Apple for the rights to use Apple's proprietary connector.

I'll think you will find that the connector is patented, so no doubt unless the manufacturer intend to licence the connector (which means the product will have to work with non-jailbroken iphones), they do not have much chance on challenging the patent, since they are already breaking one. It also makes me think that if the idea was so great then why didn't icontrolpad patent the idea themselves (after all, there were other touch screen based systems that could of done with something similar even before A